Instagram’s New Influencer Dashboard Feature!

Instagram have just announced their latest feature – An influencer dashboard, allowing brands to connect with influencers through the Instagram platform.

Instagram is rolling out a new dashboard that will allow influencers to find brand collaborations, manage brand deals, and automatically share insights with the brands they work with.

Earlier this year Instagram stopped showing the amount of likes that users can see on other peoples posts. Instagram said they did this to make people focus on the content they post and not the amount of likes the posts receive.

HOWEVER…

Instagram is a cash cow raking in around $10Billion per year so we think their new influencer dashboard release ties in perfectly to force brands into using Instagram ads or their new influencer dashboard instead of using 3rd party influencer agencies and analytics tools.

Facebook wants a cut of the influencer action!

Mark Zuckerberg is no idiot when it comes to pulling in revenue from advertising and with the amount of money influencer agencies are making it’s a no brainer for Instagram to make these moves.

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Facebook did the same to FB pages, by lowering the organic reach it forced the page owners to buy ads just to get their posts in front of the followers that the pages already had.

If Instagram pull their new platform off well enough they could very well be the biggest influencer agency in the entire world.

In a recent post by Steven Barlett, the CEO of SocialChain influencer platform stated:

By removing engagement metrics from posts earlier this year, they’ve made this new brand collab dashboard even more important – it now becomes the easiest way to work with an influencer and get their insights/engagement stats.

Is this the end of influencer agencies?

Not at all! There will be some pressure on influencer agencies that focus solely on Instagram influencers and creators but there are many other social platforms where influencers monetise their following such as; Snapchat, Youtube, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit and who knows what new social platform is around the corner that could be the next big thing.

We do think that 3rd party analytics tools like HypeAuditor or Hootsuite will be effected and completely wiped out in the very near future.

Instagram has also restricted the amount of data they release to 3rd party analytics tools which makes sense if they are trying to push brands and influencers into using the new Instagram influencer platform.

How does the new Instagram Influencer Dashboard look?

Brands are able to search through influencers they are looking to collaborate with, Instagram displays analytics on each influencer with audience demographics, engagement rates and insights to the influencers following.

Brands can shortlist influencers and also create project briefs for influencers to checkout.

How much will Instagram charge for this feature?

It’s unsure how much Instagram will charge or take from influencers and brands with the new influencer dashboard but one thing’s for sure… They will somehow make money from it and take a piece of the pie that influencer agencies have been eating for a few years.